Praxis Circle Contributor Dr. Joseph Bottum (nicknamed “Jody”) is a bestselling author, philosopher, and social critic. Praxis Circle interviewed Dr. Bottum as a leading, multi-talented, and entertaining American intellectual—a thinker concerned with the influence of religion in America and the West, arguably a prophet about America’s current state of cultural chaos, and a source of mature perspective about our national condition and the pathways forward.
Born in South Dakota, Dr. Bottum graduated received his undergraduate education at Georgetown University and his Ph.D., in medieval philosophy, from Boston College. Dr. Bottum was an assistant professor at Loyola University Maryland before the start of his career in magazine editing and writing. At First Things he was associate editor from 1995 to 1997, then poetry editor from 1998 to 2004, and editor from 2004 to 2011. From 1997 to 2004, he was literary editor of the Weekly Standard.
Dr. Bottum has served as a visiting professor at Houston Baptist, directed masterclasses in poetry at the Robert Frost Farm, and delivered dozens of invited lectures at American universities. From 2017 to 2024, he taught cyberethics at Dakota State University and established a program to “investigate the ethical, social, and existential condition of humankind, forty years into the computer revolution.”
Dr. Bottum has written extensively on literature, philosophy, and religion. His books include the widely noticed sociological study An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and Spirit of America (2014)—along with the literary study, The Decline of the Novel (2019), the childhood memoir, The Christmas Plains(2012), and the collection of his Christmas stories, Frankincense, Gold, and Myrrh (2024). He has twice been the Number 1 bestselling author on Amazon with his Kindle Singles, and his children’s verses appeared in The World Is Awake, winning the Christopher Award for best children’s book in 2008.
He is also an accomplished poet, with his most recent collection, Spending the Winter, appearing in 2022. His essays have been published in the Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, and many other magazines and newspapers. His work has been widely anthologized, and Dr. Bottum has done television commentary on shows from NBC’s Meet the Press to the PBS Evening News, and radio commentary on channels from the BBC to NPR.
In 2014, Contributor Mary Eberstadt declared that “his name would be mandatory on any objective short list of public intellectuals” in the United States, while the New York Times described him as a unique American figure, “a poet and critic and essayist with a sideline in history and philosophy.”
Dr. Bottum lives in Black Hills of South Dakota.
